Orlando missionary group brings medical help to world's neediest people

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, Dr. Arlen Stauffer and a handful of other Central Florida missionaries had long passed the point where the roads ended and travel was possible only by boat.

After a five-hour river trip on Rio Huallaga and Rio Yanayacu, they hiked up a trail no wider than a footpath toward Parinari, a ramshackle jungle village. Word had spread that American doctors were on the way. Hundreds of people were waiting for medical treatment.

Stauffer, of New Smyrna Beach, has been a longtime volunteer with Missionary Ventures International of Orlando. And the intangible rewards of helping others have kept him coming back for new missions since 1998.

For more than 20 years, the nonprofit, interdenominational group has worked from its office on South Orange Avenue just north of the Edgewood city limits, unnoticed by thousands of motorists passing by daily. The charity started in Orlando in the early 1980s when a pastor and a doctor traveled to Guatemala after an earthquake and handed out blankets at a refugee camp, said the group's president, Glen Dubois.

It has grown to an organization that sends out 200 missions a year and operates in 70 countries, including at least 15 medical missions a year, each staffed with at least one doctor, a dentist and a registered nurse. The medical missions are among its most important work, Dubois said.

"We are an evangelical group, but we treat anyone in need regardless of whether they want to hear our message," he said.

The organization sponsored Stauffer's 10-day trip in August as part of its ongoing mission to give aid, comfort and scripture to some of the world's poorest people.

"These mission trips are literally life-changing events, both for the volunteers and the people we help," said Stauffer, who spent most of his medical career as an emergency room physician.

He and eight companions treated hundreds of people each day, often without the benefit of electricity, running water or air conditioning.

Most patients had ailments caused by parasites or aches and pains related to working hard in the jungle heat. But there were serious, life-threatening cases, too.

"There was a boy with a broken femur [thighbone]. His father carried him for days to reach us," he said.

After stabilizing the youth, the missionaries used a shortwave radio to contact Roman Catholic nuns, who arranged for the boy to be treated at a hospital in nearby La Paz, Bolivia.

"You can't imagine how this makes you feel until you've gone on a mission," he said.

Missionary Ventures will begin training a new batch of volunteers starting Monday, Sept. 21 . The two-week course involves learning key phrases in the native language and local customs as well as the rules for mission groups.

Most of the volunteers raise money or pay their own travel expenses. Most medical supplies are donated, and daily expenses vary from country to country, Dubois said.

"Everything we do is donor-driven," he said. "And because there isn't any bureaucratic red tape, we can really stretch our dollars far."

A permanent medical clinic the group established in Nicaragua costs about $1,300 a month to run and treats an average of 150 patients daily.

"For many of the poorest people we reach, just to see a doctor is a miracle," Dubois said.

Rich McKay can be reached at rmckay@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5470.